Bruins in good position despite some production issues

The Bruins take a 2-1 lead into Game 4 of their best-of-7 NHL playoff series against the Red Wings, even though they've received marginal offensive contribution from their top players.

Mike Loftus The Patriot Ledger

Three games into the playoff series, it seems about time for another shoe to drop.

The Bruins would like that and could probably use it, but the Red Wings are the team that really needs it.

The B’s take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-7 into Game 4 tonight at Joe Louis Arena (8:05, NESN, WBZ-FM/98.5), building it almost entirely on team defense and special teams. They’ve scored seven goals, or 2.33 per game – almost a goal below their 3.15 regular-season average.

Four of those goals have been scored at even strength, one of them the empty-net goal by Patrice Bergeron that sealed Tuesday’s 3-0 win in Game 3. Justin Florek, Milan Lucic and Jordan Caron have scored 5-on-5 goals. If you know how the Bruins’ forward lines are set up, then you also know that some pretty big names – David Krejci, Jarome Iginla, Brad Marchand, Loui Eriksson, Carl Soderberg – are missing from that goal-scoring list.

This has only been a problem in their series-opening 1-0 loss, though, because the B’s are 3-for-8, 37.5 percent on the power play (Reilly Smith, Zdeno Chara and Dougie Hamilton have scored the goals) over the last two games, their overall defensive game has been excellent, and the penalty-killers (9 for 9, only 7 shots allowed) and goalie Tuukka Rask (0.67 goals-against average, .976 saves percentage) have been perfect, or nearly so.

The relative absence of production from top offensive players may not leave everyone with an entirely comfortable feeling, but then again, the law of averages suggests that either one of the Lucic-Krejci-Iginla or Brad Marchand-Bergeron-Smith lines will weigh in at some point. If not … well, the B’s know they can win without their offense, although not easily.

“Let’s not kid ourselves here,” coach Claude Julien said after Game 3. “The games have been tight.”

It’s all but impossible to win even the close, low-scoring games the Red Wings favor without at least some offense, though, and not only have they scored a mere two goals through three games, they can’t make the “only a matter of time” argument as convincingly as the B’s.

Scoring has been an issue in Detroit for much of the season. The Wings’ offense ranked 16 of 30 teams, with the post-Olympics absences of star forwards Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg being major causes. Gustav Nyquist came up from the AHL to lead the team with 28 goals in just 57 games, but the only teammates with more points than his 48 were 41-year-old winger Daniel Alfredsson and Niklas Kronwall, a defenseman. They were the co-leaders with 49 points.

Datsyuk scored the only goal of Game 1, but only three weeks into his return from a knee injury, he hasn’t reached full speed. Nyquist leads the Wings with 10 shots in the series, but very few have been threats and he hasn’t scored a point.

So how does this change?

Head coach Mike Babcock is calling on his team to play more of an “inside” game when the puck is in Bruins territory, but there’s some question as to how well a team built on speed (Detroit) can do that against a team built on size (Boston). Babcock also changed his lines late in Game 3, moving Nyquist up with Datsyuk and bumping so-far ineffective veteran Johan Franzen down the depth chart.

The biggest boost the Wings could get, however, would be the return of Zetterberg. Only two months removed from disk surgery, he has been on skates since just before the series started, began skating with the team last week, and participated in contact drills on Wednesday. A point-per-game producer (16-32–48 in 45 games), he’s pretty much the only proven scorer the Wings can pull out of their hats. Others who have done it before – Alfredsson (who missed Game 3 with a back problem), David Legwand, Todd Bertuzzi – haven’t done it in years.

All things considered, the Bruins’ prospects are brighter. They’re ahead, even without offensive contributions from their most talented offensive players. The Red Wings can’t say the same and they’re running short of time to change that.

Mike Loftus may be reached at mloftus@ledger.com. On Twitter.com: @MLoftus_Ledger.